The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,115
all. “This is a test.”
5:30 P.M.
And apparently a timed one.
Gray stared over at the open clay jar. With the jar’s seal broken, the glowing oil could ignite at any time. He turned to Bailey. “What are you thinking?”
The priest dropped to a knee by the altar and ran his palm over the depression in the center. “This slab is rock, but I think the shallow basin is the same tarnished bronze.”
“But what does any of that have to do with opening a gateway here?” Seichan asked.
“Heron of Alexandria,” Bailey said firmly, as if making a point.
No one got it.
“He was a brilliant engineer from the first century A.D. He designed all manner of devices, including the first vending machine, operated by the drop of a coin. Also a wind-powered pipe organ. He wrote volumes of works on the subject that I wager the Banū Mūsā brothers—collectors of scientific knowledge, with a penchant for mechanical inventions—read centuries later. Even Da Vinci references him.”
“What does any of that have to do with our situation?” Gray pressed, glancing again toward the glowing pot.
And be quick about it.
“One of Heron’s inventions was the means to magically open the doors to a temple using a crude version of a steam engine. A priest would speak to a crowd on the steps of a closed temple, then a fire would be lit in a hearth in front of the place. Once it got blazing hot, the fire would heat a water system buried underneath the hearth. The resulting steam would move pistons, wheels, and ropes, and the temple doors would seem to magically open on their own.”
“In other words, a trick,” Kowalski said.
Bailey pointed to the basin, then to the back wall. “Like this one.”
“How can you be sure?” Maria asked.
“According to Homer, the palace of the Phaeacians was built of solid bronze and the gates into the city, when opened, were said to ‘blaze like fiery gold.’”
Gray began to understand. “If a fire was lit in this altar basin, ablaze with flames from that fuel—” He pointed to the glowing pot containing the secret to an unquenchable golden flame. “Then the bronze here would shine as if made of gold.”
Bailey nodded. “That’s why I think this is a test. The Phaeacians have given us the tools, the fuel. It’s up to us to prove we understand the properties of what’s in these jars before being allowed to pass inside.”
“What do we do?” Kowalski asked. “Just pour some of that Medea Oil in the bowl and add water?”
“I think so,” Bailey said.
Gray shook his head. “No, that’s just one side of the coin.” He pointed to the broken jar on the other side of the room and the black spill around it. “That’s the other. Why else place those out here, too?”
“You may be right,” Bailey admitted. “But what is that substance?”
The answer came from an unexpected source. “Elena had an idea,” Kowalski said. “She called it the pharmacopoeia of Prometheus’s Blood.”
That can’t be right.
It wasn’t.
“Do you mean ‘pharmaka of Promethean Blood’?” Bailey asked.
Kowalski shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
The priest turned to the group. “In that same story about Medea—where she learned the formula for her fiery oil from Prometheus—she also learned the pharmaka, the recipe, for a black potion called Promethean Blood. It was derived from the sap of a plant that grew out of the spilled blood of Prometheus. She gave it to Jason to protect him from the fires of the bronze Colchis bulls.”
“Like some fire-resistant lubricant,” Mac said. “Back in Greenland, the black oil did quench the fires driving those creatures. And I think the oil in the storage pots served as some sort of preservative or insulation, keeping the creatures in an inert form until freed and exposed to wet air.”
Seichan frowned. “But what does any of this have to do with unlocking the gate?”
Gray walked back to the altar and looked between the two sets of pots. Medea developed both the fire and the means to douse it. He squinted at Mac. No, not just douse it, but also preserve and insulate the green oil.
Gray turned to Bailey. “I’m guessing that basin in the altar was not an arbitrary size. If there’s some complicated mechanics under it, the bronze bowl likely must be heated to the proper degree.”
“I suppose.”
“I think we’re supposed to add just the right amount of fuel to the basin, likely fill it to the brim.”